Moonlight

Fergus O'Connell

Description

If you’ve ever had a love affair – remember what it was like.

Summer, 1914. Clara, a passionate young London wife and the mother of two small girls, is married to Henry, a manager at an insurance company, but the marriage is not in good shape. Both of them have, in their own ways, given up on it.

Henry begins an affair with a woman at work while Clara, unaware of Henry’s transgressions, meets James, a divorced man who works at the Foreign Office. Now Clara has to fight against both the conventions of the time and her own conscience as she finds herself being drawn into the relationship with James.

Meanwhile, in the capitals of Europe, the great men of the day – Sir Edward Grey, the British Foreign Secretary, the Tsar, the Kaiser and others – are beginning the chain of terrible decisions that will lead to the outbreak of the First World War. Just as it is with all of us, their personalities, fears and insecurities drive their thought processes and determine the choices they make. And just as in recent times, we see great men making terrible decisions.

War is declared and Clara, who now knows of Henry’s affair, is madly in love with James. When Henry and James enlist, both for different reasons, Clara must now begin the long vigil, waiting to see which, if either of them, will return from the fighting. 

Sujets

• Literature
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: Anthem Press
• Date de parution: 15 septembre 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9780857281012
• Langue: English

Extrait

MOONLIGHT
MOONLIGHT
Part 3 of The Four Lights Quartet
FERGUS O’CONNELL
Moonlight
THAMES RIVER PRESS An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company Limited (WPC) Another imprint of WPC is Anthem Press ( www.anthempress.com ) First published in the United Kingdom in 2013 by THAMES RIVER PRESS 75–76 Blackfriars Road London SE1 8HA
www.thamesriverpress.com
© Fergus O’Connell 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means without written permission of the publisher.
The moral rights of the author have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters and events described in this novel are imaginary and any similarity with real people or events is purely coincidental.
A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover photograph by Rosie Selman
ISBN 978-0-85728-095-4
This title is also available as an eBook
This book is dedicated to the memory of Lewis Friday, died of wounds 25 May 1917 and buried at Boisleux-au-Mont, France
If in this book harsh words are spoken about some of the greatest among the intellectual leaders of mankind, my motive is not, I hope, the wish to belittle them. It springs rather from my conviction that, if our civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men. Great men may make great mistakes.
—Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945)
Author’s Note
I n 1914, in Central Europe, there was a political entity known as the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Today’s Austria was a part of that empire. For simplicity, throughout this book, I have referred to the Austro-Hungarian Empire as simply ‘Austria’ and anything related to it as being ‘Austrian.’
P ART 1
Chapter 1
Saturday 27 June 1914
H enry is taking much longer than usual. And now Clara is afraid she is going to laugh. Just as she did that other time. The time of The Pickwick Papers . And that’s what’s trying to creep into her head again now. That book. That blessed book. Oh dear God, don’t let it. Oh please, don’t let it.
From where she is, Clara cannot see very much. She is on her back, her head raised on her two pillows, nightdress pushed up above her waist and her legs wide apart. The room is in darkness as it always is on these occasions but, as a concession to the warm summer night, Henry drew back the curtains before getting into bed. By the ambient light from outside she can see the ceiling and a shadowed version of Henry’s moustachioed face.
She can smell him though – a mixture of toothpaste, meat, wine, brandy and the cigar he smoked in the restaurant before they came home. And she can hear him – hear his breathing which has now become something of a gentle pant, like a runner who has settled into a rhythm. She deliberately focuses on all these details because she is trying to keep her mind off The Pickwick Papers .
This is what happened last time.
He had taken her to dinner at the Trocadero. It was Saturday night – their usual night for this. As always he ordered a large, sizzling, bloody steak. She often wondered whether there was a connection between the slab of barely cooked meat that he ate and the eagerness he always felt afterwards. And she never liked this other connection between him ‘taking her’ to dinner and the act which is invariably required to follow. There is something vaguely prostitutional about it. (Is ‘prostitutional’ a real word, she wonders?)
Anyway, they came home and she could tell that he was aroused. He held an arm around her waist as they walked up Horn Lane to the house. As soon as they got inside, he went to kiss her on the lips. However, at that same moment she turned her head, looking in the hallstand mirror as she took off her hat. The result was that the kiss ended up sliding somewhat sloppily along her cheek. It was a wet kiss, that of a man who had drunk most of two bottles of red wine and finished off with a couple of brandies.
Mrs Parsons, the babysitter, emerged from the kitchen. Had Clara been by herself, Mrs Parsons would probably have been all set for a chat, but she knew better than to do that with Henry there. She put on her hat and coat and hurried out the door.
Henry followed Clara up the stairs as far as the door of the girls’ room. Clara looked in as she always did on the sleeping occupants while Henry continued on to their room. Her fear that she would find them not breathing was not as pronounced as usual – the wine had also helped to relax Clara – but she listened silently until she had reassured herself that everything was well.
She went to the bathroom, washed her face, brushed her hair and teeth and then, returning to the bedroom, changed into her nightdress, putting her dress away carefully in the wardrobe. Meanwhile, Henry had changed into his pyjamas and, in slippered feet, headed for the toilet. She heard him there. The wooden seat and its cover made a solid thunk as they were lifted and set against the pipe that ran down from the cistern. Then came a long splashing as the wine and brandy went the way of all fine drink. Henry farted. And then she waited for the hollow sound of the seat and cover to be returned to their resting place on the bowl. No such sound came. Instead she could now hear that Henry had moved to the bathroom, which was closer to the bedroom. The tap ran and he softly hummed some tune or other.
She slipped into bed and, taking a jar of cream from her bedside locker, she moistened herself. When he returned, he clambered in beside her. He lay on his back for a few moments.
‘A very pleasant night, don’t you think, my dear?’ he said.
‘Very pleasant,’ she replied.
It flashed through her mind that he might actually be too tired and was about to announce that he was going to sleep. But moments later her hopes were dashed. He turned to her and began to kiss her. She closed her eyes trying to surrender herself to the sensation and wondering if it would trigger anything down in her groin. Nothing stirred. After some more kissing he turned over, simultaneously rolling onto her in what she assumed he had intended to be one smooth movement. In reality it didn’t quite work out as neatly as that. Crablike, he moved on his elbows, rolling his hips until he seemed to be happy with his position.
These days he was as fat as a font. His round belly pressed down on her. He had been so slim and athletic when she first met him. How had he gone to seed so quickly? And at such a young age? He was younger than her, for God’s sake – by three years – only twenty nine. And she had borne two children. The belly was the thing that she hated most though. If you touched it with your hand and pressed it, it was solid and cold, like hard rubber – hard and unyielding. (Could you tell a person’s personality from their belly?)
She felt him groping for the hem of her nightdress. As he began to drag it up, she did it for him – the whole thing felt a bit more voluntary that way. He raised his bottom to clear the way for her but even then she had to tug it past his belly which remained pressed against hers. She settled the nightdress just above her waist. She assumed that he wouldn’t be bothered with her breasts tonight. She could feel his bulge pressing against her groin and then his thing slid through the opening of his pyjamas. Guiding it with his hand he pushed into her. She had not put the cream in far enough and his dry skin snagged on hers. It was uncomfortable rather than painful and she uttered a short intake of breath. The sound seemed to arouse him so that after a few perfunctory thrusts while resting on his elbows, he rose onto the palms of his hands. (Clara wondered if perfunctory was the same as cursory. She must remember to look them both up in the morning.) From time to time he made various noises – little gasps, louder groans – and gradually the intensity of his movements increased. She could sense the strain on his arms – they seemed to be almost vibrating with it. His breathing became heavier. His body began to scissor to and fro and it was at this moment, when it looked like he was riding, that she thought of The Pickwick Papers .
Dickens. She loved Dickens. Later, much later, James would point out the pun to her, but she wasn’t aware of it that night. She just remembered Messrs Pickwick, Winkle, Tupman and Snodgrass. Mr Winkle’s repeated failed attempts to mount the horse under Mr Pickwick’s guidance. The horse eventually losing interest and going home. Mr Pickwick then approaching the other horse, the one pulling the chaise and how this takes off with Mr Tupman and Mr Snodgrass. (Henry continued with his own galloping while she was thinking about all of this.)
She remembered that her copy of The Pickwick Papers had a picture in it of the chaise on its joyride. Mr Tupman has just tried to escape the runaway chaise by leaping from it. As a result he has landed head first in a bramble hedge – only his legs and his fat bottom in their tight white breeches protrude. Mr Snodgrass is in the air, having also parted company with the chaise. The horse and chaise are going over a humpbacked bridge and the stone wall of the bridge has ripped off one of the wheels, which is in motion like a child’s hoop. Ducks and chickens squawk madly as they try to get out of the way.
It was all too much for Clara. She couldn’t help herself. She burst out laughing.
Henry’s ardour faded instantly.